Volatility

Watch my new YouTube video: Hot Money Moves NOW Short the 30-year Treasury

Watch my new YouTube video: Hot Money Moves NOW Short the 30-year Treasury

Today’s Hot Money Moves NOW video is Short the 30-year treasury. In my last video, I talked about how complacent the market seems—but one area where there’s definitely no complacency is the long end of the bond market, especially the 30-year Treasuries. Investors worldwide are worried about rising U.S. deficits, soaring debt interest payments, and Congress’s inability to pass a budget on time. If you want to capitalize on this, one way is to short long-term Treasuries. You could use options, but timing those can be tricky. Instead, I recommend the ProShares Short 20+ Year Treasury ETF (TBF), which moves inversely to long-term Treasury bonds. It’s not cheap (0.95% expense ratio), but it’s up 16.3% in 2024 and has solid momentum with a gain of 6.76% in the last three months. I’m adding TBF to my Volatility Portfolio and my Jubak Picks Portfolio as a hedge against Treasury risks. You may want to wait until the spending bill feels a bit more settled, but I’m jumping in early to track how it plays out.

Putting my VIX volatility options trade back on tomorrow, Friday

VIX drops back to 22.53–I’m looking to replay my January volatility trade

22.53. That was the close on the CBOE S&P 500 Volatility Index (VIX) today. It’s safe to say that stock market volatility is way down. Back on April 21, the “fear index” was at 34.21. On April 8, at the bottom of the turmoil that followed on the April 2 tariffs, the index hit 52.33. But even before that spike, fear had been climbing among investors to 27.86 on March 10 from the very complacent 16.43 on January 31. That was substantially below the 10-year average for the VIX at 18.66. So now the question is how low the VIX will go. And when will it be time to buy VIX Call Options again on a bet that volatility will return.

Emergency Special Report: What to do NOW after the Trump tariff tumble–complete

Emergency Special Report: What to do NOW after the Trump tariff tumble–complete

Today the Standard & Poor’s 500 fell 4.25%, dropping into a correction. The NASDAQ Composite dropped 5.43%, also into a correction. The small cap Russell 2000 lost 6.59%. We don’t have to search for the cause of todays drop: yesterday President Donald Trump announced tariffs with a global minimum rate of 10% and rates on individual U.S. trading partners that included a 20% tariff on the European Union and an additional 34% tariff on Chinese goods. The fear is that the tariff increases will set off a global trade war of retaliation, and that the tariffs will push the United States into either a recession or stagflation. Take your pick about which to fear more. So what do you do NOW? That’s the topic of this Emergency Special Report.

Stocks plunge at the open on Trump tariffs–why and whither?

Stocks plunge at the open on Trump tariffs–why and whither?

After weeks of trying to believe that President Donald Trump wasn’t serious about imposing massive tariffs on the rest of the world, Wall Street heard president Trump do exactly that from the Rose Garden yesterday. And today stocks opened down biggly. At 11:20 a.m. New York time, the Standard & Poor’s 500 was down 4.21%. The NASDAQ Composite and the NASDAQ 100 were lower by 5.24% and 4.64%, respectively. The small cap Russell 2000 had tumbled 4.63%. Shares of Apple (AAPL) were down 8.64%. Nike (NKE) was off 11.79%. Nvidia (NVDA) was lower by 6.66%. Why the huge drop?

China stocks rallying on government stimulus plans–I’m buying iShares China FXI

China stocks rallying on government stimulus plans–I’m buying iShares China FXI

Just because we’ve seen this page from the play book before and just because I’m skeptical about the long-term effects of this policy doesn’t mean I don’t want to own the China rally now. On Monday March 24, I’m adding the iShares China Large-Cap ETF (FXI) to my Perfect Five ETF Portfolio and to my Jubak Picks and Volatility portfolios. (In the Perfect Five ETF portfolio I’m replacing my India ETF with this China ETF.)

Please watch my new YouTube video: Hot Money Moves Now Vix Call Options

Please watch my new YouTube video: Hot Money Moves Now Vix Call Options

Today’s Hot Money Moves NOW: Buy VIX Volatility Call Options. Toward the end of January, I bought VIX Call Options, hoping to make money as volatility increased in the market. I bought a VIX call with a strike of 20, and a VIX call with a strike of 26–both with May 21, 2025 expirations. Both of these buys were up about 40% before Friday’s snap-back rally. And looking at probable “events” I think volatility is going to increase in the second half of March. But this week we may see some optimism bring the VIX down and you may be able to buy more options on that future volatility at a temporarily depressed price. I would look to buy these options this week and hold for the next three weeks or so, through more tariff uncertainty in April and sell before the May 21 expiration. For more detail om my VIX options buys see the Volatility Portfolio on my subscription JubakAM.com site.

Monday adding more VIX options on volatility after snap-back rally

Monday adding more VIX options on volatility after snap-back rally

Friday’s snap-back rally took a big bite out of the CBOE S&P 500 Volatility Index (VIX). The VIX dropped 11.72%, or 2.89, to 21.77. But the plunge in Call options on the VIX was even bigger with the VIX Call option with a strike price of 20 and an expiration of May 2025 falling 23.34% and the VIX Call option with a strike price of 26 and an expiration of May 2025 26.000 falling 31.34%. (I’m citing the action on these two options because they are the Calls that I own in my Volatility Portfolio.)
This is exactly the opportunity I flagged last week to add more volatility bets without paying too much after the run upon options prices that came to a screeching halt on Friday.